Pike.
Silas climbed down too quickly. Daniel pushed Aaron behind a stack of lumber and signaled Silas to keep working. The door opened. Pike entered with a lantern and a pistol at his side.
“Crowe,” he called, “why is the equipment lit?”
“Greasing the bearing, sir.”
“Where is Carter?”
Silas hesitated. Daniel stepped into the lantern light. “Here.”
Pike stared at the missing ankle chain, then smiled in relief, as though a difficult problem had finally solved itself.
“An escape,” he said. “That is what I will call this.”
He raised the pistol. Daniel did not move. With his left hand he pushed the little oak wedge into the narrow gap beside the lower gear and pressed until it caught. A small, dull click came from the framework.
Pike heard it. “What did you do?”
“Stopped the carriage.”
Pike stepped toward the lever, irritated. “You have ruined tomorrow’s demonstration.”
“If you pull it now, the gear breaks. Then your pin never gets its chance.”
Pike pointed the pistol at Daniel’s chest. “Remove the wedge.”
“No.”
Aaron rose behind the lumber and stepped into view. “He did not escape alone,” the boy said.
Pike swung the pistol toward him. Daniel lunged for the lever and pulled it halfway. The counterweight dropped a handspan and the cable snapped taut with a report like a whip. Pike flinched and stumbled backward. Silas grabbed his wrist. The pistol struck the floor and slid beneath a stack of planks.
For a moment the four men struggled in the unsteady light. Then a new voice rang from the doorway.
“Enough.”
It was Catherine, with Mr. Fiske behind her and two county men carrying lanterns. She had done the one thing Daniel had thought she might be too frightened to do.
Fiske took in Pike’s grip on Silas, Daniel’s loosened chain, and the strained counterweight. He had been told he was coming to inspect a defective machine; he had not expected to interrupt a fight.
“What in God’s name is this?” he demanded.
Daniel did not answer at once. He was watching the cable. The abrupt half-pull had left the frame under pressure, and the oak wedge was beginning to split.
“Everybody away from the gallery,” he said. “Now.”
7. THE WRONG SIDE OF THE WEIGHT
Fiske’s men moved toward the door, but Pike recovered before anyone could seize him. He struck Silas across the face and sprang for the lever. Daniel shouted a warning. The overseer pulled with both hands, and the frame lurched against the wedge.
The wedge cracked. A wooden arm slammed into its stop. The enormous hanging weight shifted, and the damaged bracket began to pull sideways from the crossbeam.
